INTRODUCTION

I. The Nature of English

A. Difficulties

1. Spelling

2. Grammar

a. "How do you do?"

b. impregnate vs. impregnable

3. Vocabulary

a. OED (Oxford English Dictionary)

b. Thesaurus

B. Solution to problems

II. A Brief History of English

A. Prehistory

1. Homo erectus (1.6 million - 300,000 years)

a. larynx

b. Neanderthal

c. esophagus/airway

2. Homo sapiens (ca. 30,000 B.C.)

a. Neolithic Period

b. cave paintings (Altamira)

c. Basque (in S France, N Spain; around Bay of Biscay)

 3. New Theory

a. Basque/Na-Dene (NW Amerind)

b. Finnish/Eskimo-Aleut

c. Indo-European/Uralic/Amerind ("dog")

d. "tik"

B. History of English

1. Indo-Europeans

a. Sir William Jones

1) Vedas

2) Sanskrit/Latin/Greek

a) Skr. trayas = Lat. tres = Gk. treis

b) Skr. sarpa = Lat. serpens

3) Meeting of the Asiatick society of Calcutta, 1786

". . . no philologer could examine all three languages [Sanskrit, Latin and Greek] without
believing them to have sprung from some common source which, perhaps, no longer exists."

b. "Indo-European"

2. Indo-European languages

a. began to spread around 3500 BCE

b. Celts, Gauls, Germans, Italians, Greeks, Aryans (India), etc.

c. three important branches:

1) Germanic (English)

2) Italic (Latin)

3) Hellenic (Greek)
 3. Period of Modern English (= Anglo-Saxon Germanic)

a. Germanic foundation

1) Celtic

2) Anglo-Saxon invasion (ca. 400 A.D.)

b. infusion of Latin and Greek

1) Roman conquest of Britain (Caesar, Claudius)

a) Manchester, Lancaster

b) street, wine, mile, inch, table, chest, pillow

2) Norman conquest of William the Conqueror (1066 A.D.)

a) Normans

b) jury, justice, felony, marriage, prison, parliament

c) "Anglo-Norman"

d) "Middle English"

3) Exploration and Colonization (after 1500s A.D.)

4) Scientific Language (20th c. A.D.)

1. COGNATE(S):

2. DERIVATIVE:

3. DOUBLET(S):